BATON ROUGE - LSU's unlikely men's basketball season continues to roll on and the Tigers are starting to put distance bewtween themselves and the rest of the SEC pack in the race for the conference title.

Wednesday's 72-69 victory at Arkansas coupled with losses by Tennessee and South Carolina gave the Tigers (22-4, 10-1) a three-game lead over those two, plus Kentucky, Florida and Mississippi State with five games remaining.

LSU had to work hard to make it happen. The Tigers overcame an 18-point first half deficit and took the lead twice - 37-36 early in the second half and then 70-69 with 1:43 remaining. Marcus Thornton, who had 28 points, hit two free throws with 11.8 seconds left to secure the victory. LSU, which played strong defense in the second half, got one final defensive stop as Rotnei Clarke missed a 3-pointer just before the buzzer. Arkansas went the final 5:05 without a field goal.

It was LSU's 10th consective SEC victory and sixth straight overall. More importantly, the Tigers continued to show their toughness with their fifth consecutive road victory. The only blemish in the last 11 games is an 80-70 non-conference home loss to No. 16 Xavier.

"It's a good win," LSU Coach Trent Johnson said on his post-game radio show. "When you win on the road in this league, or any league, and you don't play well, it shows what a good team you have.

"We're continually getting better and now we're getting contributions from a lot of other guys. That's the most important thing. I'm happy for them. They're real excited right now and that's a good thing. I like where we're at. I like how we're playing. We're competing."

LSU shook off a poor shooting first half and buckled down in the second by hitting the offensive boards. The Tigers had 11 offensive rebounds in the second half, including two key ones in the final 16 seconds. Tasmin Mitchell, who had 20 points and 13 rebounds, was fouled after rebounding a missed shot with 16.2 on the clock and LSU leading 70-69. He missed the front end of a one-and-one but Garrett Temple snared the rebound and fed the ball to Thornton prior to his clinching free throws.

LSU's Chris Johnson had 12 points, 12 rebounds and six blocked shots, including a huge block prior to Mitchell's go-ahead basket. Thornton also came up with a big defensive play, stripping the ball from Michael Sanchez with 42 seconds left, his seventh steal of the game. Arkansas didn't get the ball back until after Thornton's free throws. Thornton was seven of 12 from the field in the second half.

"Find a better two guard," Trent Johnson said of Thornton. "There's two guys in the conference that are pretty special that play that position, and one of them plays at Kentucky. The other guy is at LSU."

Said Thornton who had eight points in the first half: "I had to settle down and wait till it came to me.When they got that big lead, I tried to take it upon myself to bring us back one shot at a time."

LSU trailed 28-10 with 6:18 left in the first half, but rallied to cut the margin to 32-26 by halftime. The Tigers were dreadful from the free throw line, hitting only three of 12, but hit nine of 12 in the second.

"I said 'Fellas now we got one of two things we can do: come out and play like we're capable or just go load the bus up right now and go fly out of here," Johnson said. "We weren't very good but, boy, we showed our mental toughness down the stretch.

"Garrett came up with a key offensive rebound and Terry Martin was exceptional. What I mean by that is I made a decision to start Chris Bass the second half because he's played the open and Garrett is so comfortable on the wing. Terry sat there and I thought he got frustrated and when you're like that it's hard to turn it on and turn it off. But when he came back in he got on Clarke (17 points) and got in the lane. That's the growth of our team, when a guy like that can come in.

"We're getting better. Tasmin wasn't his usual self, Marcus was a little fatigued but made some plays down the stretch. But we're doing the little things which is so encouraging and so nice to see, and it's coming from everybody."